German-American Discourse on Politics and Culture

July 22, 2009

Reivew: Pazifik Exil by Michael Lentz

What happens when you take the greatest writers and composers of Europe and place them in the epicenter of American pop culture - Los Angeles - far removed from their cultural tradition and their language? The dramatic potential is enormous - especially since the central figures loathed each other and avoided each other at home, and suddenly found themselves thrown together in a California hothouse, united by the shared fate of exile from their native countries. That is the focus of Michael Lentz's novel Pazifik Exil. Just one thing: there is virtually no drama in this novel, or rather, the drama takes place in the heads of the key figures.

The novel begins with Marta Feuchtwanger learning of the election victory of the National Socialists in 1933 while skiing in the Alps and ends with Katja Mann remembering her dead husband as well as the other exiled writers, all dead. In between we are presented with interior monologues of Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Franz Werfel, Arnold Schönberg, Lion Feuchtwanger and - especially - Bertolt Brecht. How audacious of Michael Lentz to imagine the most intimate musings of geniuses, and how could he possibly pull off something like this? With great aplomb, it turns out, since Lentz obviously immersed himself in the diaries, letters, memoirs and works of all of these luminaries. Like a medium, Lentz is able to channel the essential voices of these giants, providing the reader with a forbidden pleasure of imagining them alive -however briefly - in a surprising way.

The interior monologues in Pazifik Exil reveal a world of pain, paranoia and resentment - but also moments of hilarity: Brecht muses on the dialectic of ironing one's pants, Thomas Mann reflects on his image in a mirror, Arnold Schönberg seethes with rage at Thomas Mann for ruining his favorite chair and misinterpreting twelve tone composition in Doktor Faustus, Werfel's heart gives out as he is battered by his wife's pro-Nazi outbursts, Feuchtwanger engages Thomas Mann in an imaginary debate about pelicans, and Heinrich Mann mourns his dead wife Nelly. The common thread through all of these monologues is loss: loss friendship and love, loss of prestige and fame, loss of creative energy, loss of language and country. They know their lives - at least, their creative lives - have ended and there is no going back. Hitler destroyed their old world and Pacific Palisades in merely an exotic purgatory.

It is remarkable how little connection these artists have to America, the country that gave them sanctuary and most likely saved their lives. For the most part, they have nothing but contempt for America . Here is Brecht on America:

"Hier gibt es nur Entwicklung, aber nichts, was sich entwickelt."

(Here there is only development, but nothing that develops.)

To be sure, part of this dismissive attitude towards America reflects their much diminished status in a country that could care less about Epic Theater or twelve tone composition. But even Werfel, who achieves fame and fortune in America with his bestseller Song of Bernadette and Thomas Mann, who has an audience with FDR, have little connection to their adopted country. Part of this estrangement has to do with language - writers isolated from their life blood:

Thomas Mann, schreibt Katia, ... war zu Hause nur in der deutschen Sprache, er wohnte in der deutschen Sprache, die ihn so umklammerte, sie liess ihn nie fort, wohin er auch ging. Im Englischen, sagte er immer, habe ich gar kein Licht, ich hause da in einem Sprachloch, aus dem ich keinen Ausblick habe... (Thomas Mann, writes Katja,... was only at home in German, he lived in the German language, which gripped him so hard, it never let him loose, no matter where he went. In English, he always said, I have no light, I reside in a language-hole and can't see out....)

It would have been interesting if Lentz had also presented a different model - one of those who thrived in American exile. Carl Zuckmayer, for example, who lasted only a few weeks writing scripts in Hollywood and then left to raise sheep in Vermont. Zuckmayer had a very different relationship with America and Americans. Or those great directors such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder who thrived in Hollywood, but changed it as well with a new American cinema.

Also missing, except for a passing reference by Brecht, is the figure of Salka Viertel, the woman who opened her heart and her house in Santa Monica to all of the figures in Pazifik Exil - and many others as well. She was the glue that held the German-Austrian exile community together.

But Lentz has achieved something remarkable with his novel: with his virtuosity he blurs the the boundaries between inner and external emigration and completes an unfinished chapter in the history of modern German literature.

Comments

Fascinating. I wrote a long comment and lost it, so I'll just say Mann and others should have gone to Berkeley, where they would have felt right at home. The SF Bay Area was full of happily assimilated German exiles: artists, musicians, doctors: all kinds of people. L.A. was not the place for German thinkers, not at all. Though, as you point out, many did well in the movie industry.